


The Rain Turned to Gold

by slattern



Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Elizabethan, Elizabethan clothes, Elizabethan food, Elizabethan house names, Hand Job, Longing, M/M, Masturbation, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Sad Wank, alcohol. lots and lots of alcohol, hard times, molecules of emotion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:21:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slattern/pseuds/slattern
Summary: Aziraphale lay in bed. The late afternoon sun shot through the thick glazing on the room’s windows, illuminating dustmotes and their lazy, swirling patterns. He gazed at them, trying to slow his breathing to the pace of their shimmer. He could feel his emotions coursing through his corporation, the hormones and receptors ablaze, forcing him to suppress the urge to thrash on the mattress with the sheer intensity of the discomfort.If only he could shut down these sensations, even for a few minutes, just to get some blessed relief. But it can’t be done. They’ve tried. The human corporation runs on its emotional web of reactions. They can’t be shut off without causing the whole system to burn out.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571059
Comments: 37
Kudos: 131





	The Rain Turned to Gold

**Author's Note:**

> With great humility I present my first fanfic. Super inspired by all the incredible artists in this fandom, you are all so amazing and if I can bring even a teeny bit of the joy to others you've brought to me, well, happy days.
> 
> I may do a series with other historical vignettes, I have a few sketched out, but I write super slow.
> 
> Title is from the Buddha in The Dhammapada: "The rain could turn to gold and still your thirst would not be slaked. Desire is unquenchable or it ends in tears -- even in heaven."

**London, 1595**

Aziraphale lay in bed. The late afternoon sun shot through the thick glazing on the room’s windows, illuminating dustmotes and their lazy, swirling patterns. He gazed at them, trying to slow his breathing to the pace of their shimmer. He could feel his emotions coursing through his corporation, the hormones and receptors ablaze, forcing him to suppress the urge to thrash on the mattress with the sheer intensity of the discomfort.

If only he could shut down these _sensations_ , even for a few minutes, just to get some blessed relief. But it can’t be done. They’ve tried. The human corporation runs on its emotional web of reactions. They can’t be shut off without causing the whole system to burn out.

There’s always alcohol. Best of the chemical options available in this place. But alcohol can easily enhance rather than deaden the emotions. Witness his current agonies.

He contemplates making an Effort. It will activate a million more delicious pathways of longing in his body. But it also offers a guarantee of relief, a way to sedate the sharpest edges of his pain, this exposed, pulsing heart of unexpressed desire.

Aziraphale screws up his face in self-loathing. He can take himself in hand, so to speak, and give gasping voice to the images in his mind’s eye for a few minutes. It will leave him drained enough to go about his evening, let him breathe a bit looser until… the next time. Or he can get sloppily drunk in his room, composing execrable stanzas and reciting them to the rats in the walls.

_Yesterday_

Aziraphale placed a few coins into the fruit vendor’s broad, capable hand, and accepted several of her pears into his market basket, already brimming with dried sausage links, a radish bunch, some cress, a small yellow wheel of cheese and two loaves of round bread. She may have given him several more than she normally would for that amount, she just wanted to. And she may have got home late that night to find her feverish daughter sleeping coolly, clutching a small purse filled with sovereigns.

“Now’, he thought to himself. ‘All that’s missing..”

“All that’s missing is a nice malmsey” hissed a voice in his ear, as warm breath ghosted over Aziraphale’s cheek.

“Crowley!” He couldn’t hide the delight in his voice. He also couldn’t hide that he’d practically leapt in the air, pulling away and coming to face the demon at arm’s length. Hopefully he could hide everything else that was happening to him, always happened when he saw his friend. He could feel the hairs on his forearms and the nape of his neck raise up as his skin shivered. This particular… Crowley feeling, like golden bubbles were floating from his belly up through his chest, and then popping into a gilded mist in front of his eyes.

Crowley returned his grin, even as Aziraphale’s faltered slightly. Crowley raised his hands, each now holding a bottle of the sweet wine. It was Aziraphale’s favourite of wines available in this time and place. And it really went most excellently with the spiced, salty sausage and the musky washed-rind cheese in his basket.

“I’ve got a house around the corner. Come on then.”

An hour later found them in the dining room of Crowley’s timber-framed house. The Naked Boy[1]. The front plaster of the house featured a fading painting of a naked very full grown man, leaning rather insouciantly against a broad-trunked tree. Self-censoring by the artist combined with some strategic vandalism had left him with an ellipsis in place of his genitals.

Inside, the story of the Naked Boy became clear. The dining room of Crowley’s rented house featured a slightly overwrought rendition of the Garden, complete with a fully rendered and very well endowed Adam still leaning against the Tree, a lush, long-haired Eve on the other side of the trunk looked rather nonplussed as a large black snake wrapped around her, well into some intimate folds of her person. She held a bright fruit loosely in her hand, the bite not yet taken. The snake’s head was angled up to Eve’s face, it’s tongue extending towards her, not quite touching her slightly parted lips.

“One thing angel…” Crowley had started as they entered the house and Aziraphale headed for the table and chairs he could see in the first room off the hall. He crossed the threshold into the room and turned to see the wall-painting.

Aziraphale’s mouth opened, then shut. It opened again…”what... Did you...?”

“I didn’t know when I rented the house! It was here before me. I could cover it up I guess, but I’ve come to find it rather funny.”

Aziraphale stuttered. “...funny? But that’s not remotely, even close to what…”

“I know! But humans have been telling their versions since the beginning. There’s nothing to be done about it. So might as well enjoy the, er, view.” Crowley gestured at the tableau and shrugged at Aziraphale, one eyebrow raised in appeal.

Aziraphale laughed. The combination of the comically voluptuous painting and Crowley’s amused appreciation of it was too much. They dragged the heavy wooden chairs with their plush feather padding around to the same side of the table, facing the wall painting.

Which, an hour later, is where they were, several bottles in. Aziraphale had given himself over to enjoyment as he ate their impromptu supper. The sweet pear layered with the cheese, and the bite of radish and cress. A sip of the sweet, spicy malmsey rounded out the sonnet of tastes perfectly.

“Are you sure you won’t have some my dear boy?” Aziraphale asked, slightly cross eyed as he focused on layering a sliver of cured sausage between two slices of radish, before popping it all into his mouth, eyes closing briefly in reverent bliss.

“You know I won’t, angel.” Crowley said, leaning back in the chair and running his narrow hands up and down his trunk. He’d taken off his cloak and jerkin when they sat down, opening the fastenings of his dark coloured doublet, and eventually unlacing it from the front of his breeches so it hung open over his soft linen shirt. Aziraphale felt his mouth suddenly fill with saliva as Crowley passed his hands over his ribs, the darker shade of his nipples showing through the thin linen as it pulled taut over his chest for a moment.

It was a pantomime they'd played out for centuries. Crowley's corporation, by design or as a side effect of the enormous amounts of alcohol it had processed, could only tolerate the occasional well-cooked porridge without agonizing after effects. The alcohol seemed to necessitate a bowl of pottage a few times a week to soak it up. But Crowley didn't eat for pleasure. He did… other things for pleasure. Aziraphale's mind glanced at that thought for a long moment, lulled by the slide of Crowley's hands over his concave stomach, before giving himself a little shake, swallowing and taking up his lines in their playacting.

"I know, of course. What a shame, you can't, well… ah well."

Eventually, the food is pushed aside, and more bottles emerge from Crowley's capacious cellar. Darkness has fallen, and the cries of the nighttime hawkers drift in from the street out front. Crowley's houseman has stoked the fire, and the room is pleasantly warm and dim. The flickering fire softens the garishness of the wall painting, allowing Aziraphale to imagine onto it the mobile, intelligent face of the woman he knew, briefly, in the real Garden.

In the warmth of the softly lit room, Crowley has taken off his doublet completely, wrapping himself in a velvet house coat, its dark green set off by a trim of thick, soft black fur.. 'is that wolf?' Aziraphale wonders idly. Crowley is draped, _practically poured,_ across his chair and halfway across the table, his head resting heavily on his hand, his face canted towards the angel. His other hand restlessly slides the base of his wine glass over the polished surface of the table, belying the lassitude of the rest of his body.

The two men mirror each other on the table, although Aziraphale’s doublet is still fastened, and his feet are firmly on the floor. But the top half of his body is drunk enough for the whole, as he pillows a ruddy cheek in his right fist. He’s drunk enough now that he doesn’t stop himself from looking, really looking, at Crowley. It’s normally always glances from under his lashes, or stealing a long, secret look when Crowley is walking away. He’s looking now, his whole face turned towards Crowley’s, letting his gaze slide softly across his friend. Crowley has taken his spectacles off, but his eyes are closed. His lids are translucent, the blue of Crowley’s veins seeping through, his lashes dark gold against the soft shadow under each eye.

Aziraphale is filled with a desire to feel the softness of the fur at Crowley's collar. It's rucked up slightly between his hand and his cheek where his head is resting. The black of the fur is so dark it has a sheen, setting off the hollows of Crowley's face, the copper of his hair. Aziraphale watches as his hand reaches, close enough to Crowley to feel the heat of him, and rests itself on the demon's shoulder, fingers stretching into the slick softness of the fur collar.

Crowley's eyes open, slowly. Aziraphale's senses return in a nauseating rush. He turns his hand sharply, brushing imaginary dust from Crowley's cloak, before pulling his hand back and resting it in his lap, clenching and unclenching it a few times quickly. Crowley blinks at him, holding his gaze. The eye contact and the silence grow more uncomfortable. Something of panic must show on Aziraphale's face, because Crowley mercifully breaks the moment. "More wine?" He shakes the empty decanter, lower lip protruding mournfully. Crowley somehow untangles his limbs and clutches the cloak around himself as he makes his way to the sideboard for a fresh bottle.

They pass another hour or more, reminiscing, which is a near bottomless well for two immortal beings. They share all their contemporary finds with each other too. What people are eating, thinking, saying, drinking, wearing. They’ve done it since the beginning. It helps them fit in, to adapt to human mores which seem to be changing faster and faster as the millenia progress. And, well, it’s fun. A new dish, a new artist, a new musical genre… the pleasure of them is made deeper, fuller, in being shared.

Of course, Aziraphale can’t possibly integrate change at the rate that the serpentine Crowley can. He struggles to stay on the ‘eccentric’ side of the continuum, rather than ‘dangerously odd,’ and being a posh man-shaped blond with plenty of money does the rest.

It’s full dark now. The hawkers are mostly quiet, replaced by the occasional call of drunks to each other, the softer note of a Magdalene teasing a customer, and once, a crash, followed by running feet. The fire has burned down to embers, burning hotly into charcoal. Aziraphale and Crowley face each other once again, leaning on the table as they laugh, drunkenly.

Their shared laughter slows, and stops. It's quiet. Aziraphale risks a glance upwards, and Crowley is looking at him. The room is warm, and Aziraphale is warm. He feels so soft, his spine relaxed. His body curves, the wine, the warmth, and Crowley… are making him pliant and open. He doesn't stop himself from returning Crowley's gaze. He doesn't stop himself from leaning toward his friend, close enough that he can't focus on his face anymore. Their faces are close, but not touching. "I just like being in your company… so much." Aziraphale says quietly, into the space next to Crowley's ear.

He hears Crowley’s intake of breath, then the breath held. Like the words are queued up, waiting. And then they come. Crowley’s hand rises to Aziraphale’s face, his palm hot and trembling, very slightly. “I would be in your company, always.”

It’s the tiniest thing. Not even an action, but a release, of the smallest switch inside himself. Some subtle shift in his solar plexus, and Aziraphale’s restraint vanishes. His hands go to the back of Crowley’s neck, his mouth find his friend’s. Everything is warm, and soft, even Crowley’s taste, when his mouth parts under Aziraphale’s, is soft, sweet, the spice of the wine mellowed to mirror the warm shimmer of the golden bubbles rising like a geyser in Aziraphale’s chest. 

They go on like that for a while. Aziraphale’s whole corporation is tingling, sparkling, he’s suffused with the golden feeling, his body’s cells translating love into the language of humanity. He’s drunk with this now, not alcohol. He wants nothing but to extend this moment, Crowley’s mouth on his, hands tangled in hair.

Crowley’s hands slide down Aziraphale’s throat, to his collarbone. His doublet is open now, somehow, and his fine woven linen shirt (Belgian. He has standards) meets the demon’s hands. Crowley leans his body close, sliding his hands around Aziraphale’s body, just the thin linen of their shirts separating their chests now as Crowley presses them together.. Crowley’s chin presses down into Aziraphale’s shoulder, pinning him in place. Aziraphale turns his head slightly, and his cheek touches Crowley’s. There’s no stopping it - he presses his face, into Crowley, opening his mouth, tasting his skin. He nuzzles, glutting himself on the demon’s smell that suffuses his hair and the delicate skin behind his ears. The sparkling, bubbling ecstasy in Aziraphale’s body is louder, stronger.

The angel feels out of control of his body. He’s tingling all over, but the molten gold, pulsing pleasure of arousal is pressing against his breeches, the head of his cock dragging slightly against the weave of the fabric. He opens his mouth against Crowley, in his hair, behind his ear, and the smell is overwhelming. Leaf-litter, clove, wine, some indefinable musk that calls a moan of pleasure from Aziraphale, as his cock throbs so sharply it’s almost painful.

Aziraphale’s cry seems to still Crowley for a moment, and then his arms are strong around the angel, standing him up and lifting - _lifting_ \- him onto the table. His body slides between Aziraphale’s parting thighs, as his hands deliberately settle on the curves of his rear, pulling Aziraphale against him, pressing their hardness together, the friction of the fabric between them drawing gasps from them both. Aziraphale’s hands scrabble for purchase on the table, his vision blurred as his pupils are vast with arousal, head thrown back as he submits to the strength of his friend. Crowley pushes into him and up, thrusting his hard cock against Aziraphale’s, drawing a series of hitching gasps from the angel before Crowley’s hand is at the back of his head, pushing a mouth against his, groaning wetly into him. Aziraphale’s eyes close and all he sees is stars, golden swirling, the confines of his body feeling soft and indistinct as his pleasure, his aching, overwhelming desire is blended with Crowley’s, his friend’s arms pulling them tightly against each other.

Aziraphale’s mind is blurred. There’s Crowley’s forceful hands on him, one behind his head and one wrapped around his cock. The angel’s breath is coming in gasps, he sees nothing but golden swirls, he smells nothing but Crowley, his spicy leaf litter musk, the exquisite pleasure coursing through his body, the heat of Crowley’s mouth against his throat, his hand twisting in short, firm strokes around the head of Aziraphale’s cock, there’s no past, no future, only this ecstatic present moment.

“Crowley, oh Crowley, oh…..” Aziraphale throws his head back, everything is still, his climax is so intense he sees, hears nothing for a moment, it’s like bursting above the cloud line into the neverending brilliance of the sunlight, it’s like he remembers flying.

Aziraphale lays in his bed, his spend cooling against his hand and his bare skin where he’s rucked up his shirt as he had arched up off the bed in his release. He wants to cling to the golden warmth of his vision, but it’s already fleeting, replaced by the memory of the awkward end to the night in Crowley’s warm, seductive room, under the eyes of Eve. Of course he hadn’t released his control, not all the way, he never did, and never would. As Crowley’s hand had touched his cheek, as the unspoken was about to be voiced, Aziraphale had stood up abruptly (if rather unsteadily), made his excuses and had Crowley’s man walk him back to his rooms.

Now he lays alone in his bed, feeling his breathing slow, his member softening as he milks a last few drops of spend from it. A thick pearl of semen slides onto his belly, as a few tears finally spill over and down his cheeks. He feels cool now, inside and out, his body and its emotions dampened. Slowly, he stands and walks to his basin where he cleans himself with a linen cloth, then dresses. He’s hungry. This troublesome corporation at least has one desire that can be satisfied. A street hawker for a pasty, an orange, and then perhaps the theatre?

**Author's Note:**

> 1This is a detail from Elizabeth’s London by Liza Picard. Elizabethan houses didn’t have addresses, they had names, and she gave some examples, including The Naked Boy. I couldn’t find any info on whether there would be a rendition of the name on the house, like a pub sign does, so I made it up. Actual historians/people who know, feel free to correct me.


End file.
